"Sources inside Billboard confirm that the publication is planning to count in-front-of-the-paywall Tidal streams of Meek Mill's Wins & Losses in the album’s chart total—and the potential chart ramifications are already seismic. Bible staffers are apoplectic over the lack of leadership at the top of the publication and the refusal to address the most naked example of chart manipulation in recent memory.

These free streams generate no revenue and thus equate to free goods, thus making them ineligible for chart inclusion. Also, the presence of the album in front of the paywall opens the way for unlimited use of bots to drive up streaming totals, unencumbered by accounts or logins.

Think about it this way: If a man beat to death your mum, and your mum forgave him, do you forgive him too? Are you capable of erasing the memories of your mum bleeding and going into surgery to fix her face?

Well... There are scientific precedents of domestically abused women coming back to their abusers. Rihanna did a mistake but I won't forget what he did. And I do believe in second chances, but Chris also had issues with Frank Ocean and many other guys. He is violent, and I don't support "people" like that.

If Jay-Z really cares about her... He would not help Chris with his streaming platform. And deep down you know that Jay-Z is a business man without moral values, he even cheated his wife so... I mean, he cheated Beyoncé. Who does that?

I'm not defending Jay Z, TIDAL is owned by lots of people. Of course I can't stand that person and I'm actually surprised to see him perform there. It's just that it isn't Jay's fault there still is an audience for him. Am I glad? No, but if they all decided to move on then fine.

Deep down you can't know what I think, because you've never even met me.

Hugo wrote:I'm not defending Jay Z, TIDAL is owned by lots of people. Of course I can't stand that person and I'm actually surprised to see him perform there. It's just that it isn't Jay's fault there still is an audience for him. Am I glad? No, but if they all decided to move on then fine.

Deep down you can't know what I think, because you've never even met me.

Indeed. We don't know each other in real life. But I know your point of view when it comes to Beyoncé and everything that involves her life.

Anyway, it's not like Tidal is relevant and that show will have 150M viewers so I'm fine too.

Tidal Is Helping the People of Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria Relief Efforts in a Major Way

Tidal stepping up in a big way when it comes to helping the people of Puerto Rico, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria last week.

Most of the 3.4 million people who live on the Caribbean island and U.S. territory have been without electricity and thousands have been rendered homeless due to the storm. Residents are also in dire need of drinking water, food and fuel. Cell service is scarce and hospitals struggle to operate.

"Tidal, in partnership with [New York] Governor Andrew Cuomo's Empire State Relief and Recovery Effort, has announced the start of the TIDAL X: Puerto Rico initiative with the charter of a cargo plane that will bring much needed supplies to aid in the recovery and relief in Puerto Rico," the company, which is partially owned by Jay-Z, said in a statement Thursday. "Leaving on Friday, October 7th, this first plane will carry 200,000 pounds of batteries, flashlights, portable lanterns, diapers, baby wipes, cases of water and feminine hygiene products."

The statement said the groups are "calling on the global community to help with the humanitarian crisis affecting Puerto Rico" and revealed 19 locations in New York where people can drop off unopened supplies.

In addition, monetary donations can be made at TIDAL.com/PuertoRico.

"My heart goes out to every single individual that has suffered as a result of this hurricane," said rapper Fat Joe. "Watching from the sidelines has been heartbreaking - let's fill that plane and help our brothers and sisters! Even the smallest contribution will go a long way."

Tidal's announcement comes a week after the company revealed that its annual TIDAL X: BROOKLYN benefit concert will take place on October 17 and that proceeds will go to "organizations that support relief and recovery for those affected by the unprecedented natural disasters." This includes Hurricane Maria as well as Hurricane Irma—which hit parts of Florida, and Hurricane Harvey—which devastated Houston, as well as the 7.1 earthquake that killed more than 325 people in Mexico on September 19.

The lineup includes the likes of Jay-Z, Fat Joe, Jennifer Lopez, DJ Khaled, Chris Brown, Cardi B, Remy Ma, Daddy Yankee, Yo Gotti, Fifth Harmony, Iggy Azalea and Willow Smith.Lopez, who has family in Puerto Rico, earlier this week announced she is donating $1 million to the Hurricane Maria relief efforts. She and boyfriend Alex Rodriguez announced in late August they had donated $50,000 to victims of Hurricane Harvey in Houston.

Other celebs have also donated large sums of money to hurricane relief efforts and helped raise awareness for the issues. Pitbull even lent a private plane to transfer cancer patients from Puerto Rico to the United States.

Hi-resolution streaming music service Tidal running out of cash, may close next year

“Lossless streaming music service Tidal is reported to be running out of cash, having run up losses of around $44M last year. Jay-Z and other owners are said to have lost more than half a billion dollars in all.Norway’s Dagens Næringsliv says that the company now has only enough cash to last it six months, raising the prospect of the service closing down by the summer – despite a $200M investment by Sprint …

Tidal claimed 3M subscribers in January, while an internal report was said to put the number at 1.2M. Research company Midea estimates the current subscriber base to be around 1M. This compares to around 30M for Apple Music and 60M for Spotify.”

I personally believe that Jay-Z is selfish and did the wrong thing with Tidal, but I also hope that streaming don’t become a monopoly like iTunes was—even If I’m an Apple fanboy—as I want streaming to be a healthy platform for the music industry. Having Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, Pandora, Google Music, Tidal and others is great, competition is always better for us.

On the positive side, looks like we’ll finally be able to stream “Lemonade” on Apple Music, Spotify, etc

JeyBeMust wrote:It's crazy seeing how Jay-Z supports a man who beat up his once protégé... He swore that Chris Brown would not perform on stage again while he was alive.

Disappointed.

What can you expect from a person who already has a photo op of a platinum certification of his album that wasn't even out for public consumption? Every single thing in his personal life and career is about business and money.

Tidal may be running out of cash according to recent reports, but Jay-Z’s music streaming service has been on fire with shipping app updates for Apple’s platforms lately. Earlier this month Tidal shipped its iPhone X app update which added support for Apple CarPlay. Now, Tidal is coming to the Apple TV with a new tvOS app.

According to The Verge, Tidal will be arriving on both Apple TV and Android TV today. Tidal’s first Apple TV app will support both music playback and music video playback which is ideal for home theaters and entertainment centers.

Tidal has launched its first TV apps today for the Apple TV and Android TV platforms, letting subscribers access both Tidal’s entire library of music along with video content like concerts, livestreams, and music videos directly on their TVs.

Apple TV includes a built-in Music app that works with Apple Music, but Tidal subscribers previously relied on AirPlay from other devices to send music to Apple TV. Now, Tidal subscribers will be able to browse the Tidal catalog and play music and videos directly from the streaming media player.

In addition to Apple Music, Tidal joins other streaming services including Pandora which has long had a tvOS app, but Tidal has beat Spotify to the punch with Apple TV support.

I signed up to the trial yesterday and I think I might subscribe. I like the interface more than Spotify and the fact it has at least 6 million or so more songs than it's competitors is great. Higher royalty rates being paid out is another pro. The "suggested tracks" tab is cool and the track radio is a lot more diverse than Spotify and Apple Music. I hope they last!

Yes! I'm using the app on my Android phone and it looks and works flawlessly. There is no buffering whatsoever and it runs smoothly. I would recommend checking out many of the 'classic playlists' they have in particular "90s Pop Rock Knockouts". Also when playing a song swipe left to bring up the 'suggested tracks' screen and a list of 20 songs appear which can help you discover music.

Music mogul JAY-Z‘s TIDAL continues to grow. The hip-hop icon’s popular streaming giant has branched out to a few more major devices.

According to a new report, TIDAL subscribers can now enjoy their streams on both Amazon Fire TV and Android Auto.

Today, global music and entertainment platform, TIDAL announced the launch of the TIDAL app for Android Auto as well as Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. TIDAL members can enjoy a custom Fire TV interface that emphasizes TIDAL’s visual ecosystem and is designed to provide the best experience for large screen devices. Additionally, those with Android Auto compatible vehicles can now access TIDAL, simplifying the use of apps on the go.

Back in December, TIDAL launched on streaming gadget Apple TV.

Tidal has launched its first TV apps today for the Apple TV and Android TV platforms, letting subscribers access both Tidal’s entire library of music along with video content like concerts, livestreams, and music videos directly on their TVs. The new platforms is the latest in a series of expansions for Tidal, which also recently added support for Apple’s CarPlay and integration with Sonos speakers in the last few weeks. Offering the ability to access Tidal content on televisions gives the company another avenue to reach listeners, especially in places like the Apple TV, which currently doesn’t have a Spotify app. (The Verge)

In 2016, Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine shut down rumors about his company looking to acquire TIDAL.

You might recall that, in the deep dark recesses of music streaming history – ie. two years ago – Jay Z-owned TIDAL left many in the music business scratching their heads.

In March 2016, the firm claimed that Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo, a six-week exclusive on its platform, had been streamed 250m times in just 10 days.

At the same time, TIDAL claimed that its platform had surpassed 3m subscribers.

These numbers meant that, on average, every single TIDAL subscriber would have had to be playing the Kanye album over eight times a day.

Similar suspicions were triggered by the success of Beyonce’s record-breaking Lemonade a couple of months later.

TIDAL claimed that Lemonade was streamed 306m times on its platform in its first 15 days post-release.

Stats like this led Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv to investigate in January 2017 – and uncover documents which, it said, suggested that TIDAL had been deliberately inflating its subscriber figures.

This report was lend credence by data from trusted music industry research firm Midia in the same month, which estimated that TIDAL’s subscriber base actually only included 1m people worldwide.

Now, DN has run an update – following more than a year of journalistic digging. And it’s an absolute jaw-dropper.

Its central accusation: ‘Beyoncé’s and Kanye West’s listener numbers on TIDAL have been manipulated to the tune of several hundred million false plays… which has generated massive royalty payouts at the expense of other artists.’

The newspaper’s investigation was ignited by its receipt of an illicit hard drive, which it says ‘contains ‘billions of rows of [internal TIDAL data]: times and song titles, user IDs and country codes’.

The veracity of the data on this hard drive has been strongly challenged by TIDAL, but according to DN, the numbers match exactly with information received by record labels during the dates in question.

(Says DN: ‘In the Life of Pablo month, February 2016, TIDAL customers supposedly listened to a total of 758,745,952 songs, according to the numbers on the hard drive. In the record company’s payment reports, the total is [also] 758,745,952 songs.’)

Suffice to say, the information contained on the drive has landed TIDAL in seriously hot water.

To set the scene, DN interviews a series of TIDAL subscribers, presenting them with logs of their individual play-counts of both Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo.

One of these subscribers, Copenhagen-based composer Halfdan Nielsen, is informed he supposedly listened to songs from Lemonade on more than 50 occasions. He denies it, calling the figures “nonsense”.

DN also tracks down a law student in Washington D.C – Tiare Faatea – who, according to the data, played tracks from Beyoncé’s Lemonade 180 times within 24 hours.

Faatea is perplexed. “No, that can’t be right,” she says.

Another TIDAL subscriber, music critic Geir Rakvaag, supposedly played tracks from Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo 96 times in a single day – with 54 plays in the middle of the night.

“It’s physically impossible,” he says.

The list goes on.

So much so, that DN gets in touch with NTNU – the Norwegian University of Science and Technology – which it says has ‘assembled some of Norway’s leading experts in data security and cybercrime prevention’.

NTNU’s Center for Cyber and Information Security (CCIS) has forensically investigated the data that DN has obtained on TIDAL’s plays.

It’s produced a shocking report – which you can download in full here.

Amongst the CCIS’s findings: “We have through advanced statistical analysis determined that there has in fact been a manipulation of the [TIDAL] data at particular times. The manipulation appears targeted towards a very specific set of track IDs, related to two distinct albums.”

The CCIS team usually works on developing digital intelligence methodologies, and is led by Professor Katrin Franke.

Its findings suggest that “various methods” were allegedly used to bulk up plays of The Life of Pablo and Lemonade.

In the case of the former, TIDAL is accused of accessing genuine user accounts to play more than 150m ‘duplicates’ of TLOP tracks at exactly the same times: 02.00 and 05.00.

“According to the logs, every single user supposedly listened to a large number of tracks at precisely the same second in time,” reports DN.

More than 1.3m subscriber accounts were reportedly subject to this alleged ‘manipulation’.

With the Beyoncé album, TIDAL is accused of repeating subscribers’ own streaming patterns to fatten up the play-count.

“The duplicates are logged at different times, differ from one user to the next, which makes them more difficult to detect,” reports DN.

There is some fishy evidence, however.“The number of minutes elapsing before the track is re-entered in the log varies, but the time interval is always a variant of a figure multiplied by six minutes (6, 12, 18, 24, …). In addition, the tracks are restarted at the same second and millisecond,” reports DN.

The CCIS claims to have detected more than 170 million plays on TIDAL of Lemonade or its corresponding music video album which conform to the same repetitive patterns.

“Given how targeted and comprehensive the manipulation is, it is highly improbable that the manipulation could solely be the result of a code-based bug or other anomaly,” state the investigators in the CCIS report.

There is also nothing to indicate a data breach from the outside.

Professor Franke concludes: “[It] is highly likely that the manipulation happened from within the streaming service itself.”

The consequences of this alleged tampering are seismic.

DN says it has gained access to record company royalty payment reports, which reveal that TIDAL paid Sony in excess of $4 million across April and May of 2016.

Of this, Lemonade – a Billboard 200 No.1 album – accounted for $2.5 million, based on the figures reported by TIDAL.

It’s a similar case for The Life of Pablo: according to DN, in February and March 2016, TIDAL paid Universal a total of €3.2 million.

Of this, The Life of Pablo cashed in around €2 million.

TIDAL has strongly denied ‘manipulating streaming figures or tampering with royalty payments’, according to DN.

DN reports that the streaming company’s legal team at Reed Smith actually attempted to shut down the CCIS study, claiming in a letter that: “[DN journalist] Mr. Tobiassen and DN lied to NTNU and falsified the underlying data to procure a ‘study’ which suited their foregone conclusions.”

Adds DN: “The lawyers claim that NTNU’s report is based on false assumptions. TIDAL believes that the data the report is based on is stolen, incomplete for the relevant periods, that DN has changed the data and has lied to NTNU about the origin and content of the data.”

TIDAL’s lawyer at Reed Smith, Jordan W. Siev, is quoted as saying: “As each of these assumptions is demonstrably false, you and DN lied to NTNU to procure a study”.

What a stupid way of hurting Beyoncé and Kanye's reputation. They don't need false reports because they proved to be successful without Tidal, Jay-Z doesn't care about anyone but himself and his businesses